


palimpsest.

by samariumwriting



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Gen, Glenn isn't here because he's dead but his presence is Felt, Grief/Mourning, Identity Issues, M/M, Trans Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28381758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: Felix is a sum of his parts, cobbled together by love and loss in equal measure. The realisation of that is a long time coming.A study in grief, gender, and the marks the past leaves behind that can never truly be wiped away.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius, Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 33
Collections: Fire Emblem Trans Winter Exchange 2020





	palimpsest.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackberrychai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackberrychai/gifts).



> This fic was written for the @fetranshub winter exchange, which was a bunch of fun to help organise! I got to write for Berry, whose prompt grew a life of its own. This fic is a tiiiny bit experimental for me but I hope it worked out, and I hope you like it!!
> 
> There are one or two mentions of dysphoria in this fic, Felix's canon-typical difficult feelings towards Dimitri, and a whole lot of Complicated Gender Feelings, so if that might be rough for you then please bear it in mind <3

_ noun _

  1. a manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing.
    * something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.



* * *

"Do you think that's still me?" Felix's fingertips traced the surface of the letter, almost trying to smudge the long-dried ink that spelt out a name he never wanted to see again.

He didn't know exactly why he asked the question. No one had an answer, and if they gave the one he felt inside then he had to chide them for it. If they said that was still him, they were saying they still saw him as the little girl who cut her (his?) braids off with a knife and threw them into the fireplace.

So instead he received the answer he wanted to hear: "Not at all," his father said. A practised answer if Felix had ever heard one, but he appreciated it nonetheless. "I will write to them and correct their mistake."

Felix stared at the letter again. It was rendered with care, the important first line to an important letter. It made him feel sick. "I want to correct  _ this  _ mistake," he said.

His father blinked at him. Perhaps he recognised the sound of Felix's voice inching towards tears he'd long since abandoned. In the past, he'd always known exactly what to do to calm him down: wipe his tears, offer him some kind of appeasement, and get him far away from whatever caused the upset in the first place. Or closer, if the upset was Dimitri.

But it was as he said - Felix was different now. There was a distance between them that had only been filled with barbs and disappointment.

"I'm going to correct it," he said. His father nodded, because of course he didn't know what else to do. He never did.

So he watched as Felix fetched a bottle of ink and a quill from his writing desk. Perhaps it was only then that he realised what Felix intended, because his expression stuttered a little. Felix willed him, internally, to take a stand. To tell him he couldn't do it, so Felix could do it  _ anyway  _ and feel good about it.

Instead, he stood there and watched as Felix furiously wrote his name over the older ink. He wrote it again and again, until the parchment tore under the weight of his frustration and the name was no longer visible.

But Felix knew it was there. His father knew it was there. And that was how it would stay.

* * *

Time moved on, and Felix lost sight of the little girl who used to haunt him in the mirror. But when it came to everyone else? He didn't know.

"Hey, Felix!" Ingrid called as she leaned up, stretching her arm out and waving to him from where she sat on the grass in front of the Blue Lions classroom.

He'd managed to avoid her yesterday, claiming that the journey tired him out. But today she sat with Sylvain and the boar, and he couldn't refuse. He definitely couldn't claim he had something else to do - it was hours until dinner, there were no classes until the following day, and it was pretty obvious he'd just come from the training grounds.

He was stuck. So he fixed a frown on his face and headed over, hoping he'd get an excuse to leave again soon enough. "Did you want something?" he asked.

"Just to talk," Sylvain said, patting the grass beside him. The only other marginally free spot was next to the boar, so Felix reluctantly took it, folding his legs under himself. "You were like a ghost yesterday!"

That was on purpose, but Felix didn't say so. It was probably a little too early in the year to disappoint them; he'd let them do it to him first. "I'm here now," he said instead.

"And I'm glad for it," Ingrid said, a small smile forming on her face. "It's been forever since I last saw you."

Sylvain nodded fervently. "You look super different compared to last time!" he said. "You grew your hair out."

The last time Felix saw Sylvain, it was right after he informed everyone of his new name. His hair was freshly cut, slightly choppy where the hack job he'd done himself couldn't quite be smoothed over. He'd had years to grow it since then, and that was probably all Sylvain was commenting on.

But that wasn't what it sounded like. It sounded like Sylvain remembering the way his hair  _ used  _ to look, when his friends didn't call Felix across a courtyard to summon him. So Felix clenched his fist in his lap, bit back anything too revealing, and said, "perhaps. What of it?"

Sylvain's hands went in the air immediately, a laugh falling from his lips. "Woah, Felix, I didn't mean anything by it! You just look good."

The boar nodded fervently, and Felix clamped down on the ugly feeling that rose in his stomach. He didn't want to think about this. "I agree with Sylvain," the boar said, his voice too polite, too put together. "You've really grown into yourself."

Felix huffed. "Pretty words from someone like you," he said. Their eyes met for just a moment, and Felix shifted uncomfortably. Sitting down here was a mistake.

It wasn't that any of them were wrong. He  _ did  _ like the way he looked now, and his hair felt more like him than it had when he cut it short out of desperation. But when they commented on change, growth, all of that rubbish... they had a frame of reference. They were comparing him to the not-Felix who existed in the past.

And maybe they were thinking about someone else, too. In the run up to starting at the Academy, Felix had to get a uniform tailored. It was something he had to wear every day, so he had to make it look  _ right.  _ Had to make it look fine on his body, no matter how he felt about its shape that day.

It turned out that was easier said than done, and he spent hours staring at adjustments as he tried to find a balance between something that would be suited to the warmer weather of central Fódlan and something that wouldn't make him want to claw at his chest on every bad day.

When he finally settled on something bearable, he showed his father. But instead of just minding his business like he should have, his father's face twisted into a sad smile. "You look just like Glenn," he said. He ignored Felix's clenched fists and continued. "He never got to attend the Academy, but I think he would have been happy to see this."

Felix said something empty and angry in reply about how his father couldn't see two inches beyond his own nose. He kept the uniform, though he didn't exactly know why.

"Hey, Felix?" Sylvain's voice broke through his thoughts as Felix jumped back out of the past. "Earth to Felix! Something the matter?"

Felix shook his head, scowling at the three of them. His scowl only deepened when he looked up to see the rest of their classmates approaching; he couldn't even escape now. Unless he wanted to look horrifically rude.

Still, he couldn't help but tense further. Sure, only Dedue had known him before he called himself Felix, and none of them knew Glenn to compare the two of them. But there was something about it all that still set him on edge.

There were a fair few he hadn't met before, so they all went round their little circle and introduced themselves. Felix couldn't help but notice, after the comment Sylvain and Dimitri made about his hair, that he was the only man in their class with long hair. Annette's was tied up, but all the women in the class had long hair, too.

The circle of names came round to him, and Felix was suddenly very conscious of that tiny fraction of his speaking range that was too high, too soft. "I'm Felix," he said, wincing internally at how forced he sounded when he half ground out the words. Surely they'd know, surely they'd  _ see. _

But then the conversation moved on. Sylvain spoke next, his voice loud and clear as he nudged Felix lightly in the ribs. "He's a bit gruff, but he's sweet underneath." Felix scowled at him, but he was able to relax marginally. With Sylvain's words, they'd all know that he wasn't just a girl with a funny name.

The problem was that the worry didn't disappear. A few days later, he was in the training grounds with Sylvain, glad he'd  _ finally  _ managed to get him to do a bit of training. At the end of Felix giving him a handful of pointers, Sylvain just smiled, hooked an arm around his shoulder, and spoke the forbidden words. "You know, it's strange seeing you so stern," he said. "You used to be such a crybaby."

Felix felt his shoulders lock up as he shoved Sylvain away, brushing himself off. His eyes flew over to Ashe, who thankfully hadn't even looked over from where he practised his archery. There was nothing to say he wasn't listening, though. "Quit it," he snapped.

Sylvain just laughed. "Embarrassed of the past, Felix?"

"No," he shot back, because even if he  _ was,  _ it didn't matter right now. What mattered was that Ashe was right there, listening to them both probably, and he didn't want to give anyone who didn't know the opportunity to work it out. "But maybe  _ you  _ should be ashamed of your present."

Sylvain's eyes flashed with understanding as he followed Felix's gaze to where Ashe stood. "You wound me!" he said, stepping back and clutching at his heart. Good. He'd taken the bait, and Felix was content to dance around him with sharp words until Ashe finally left the training grounds.

He sort of hoped it could continue like that, but Sylvain wasn't one to let things go so easily. The moment Ashe was gone, he broke off their current bout and clapped his hand on Felix's shoulder, his grip warm and firm. "You don't have to be ashamed of the way you used to be, you know," he said.

He was trying to meet Felix's eyes. Felix pointedly looked away. "I'm not," he said.

"Sure thing," Sylvain said with a shrug. "Just putting it out there. And you  _ are  _ different - sort of like Glenn now? You're still the boy I grew up with, sure, but you're more like him too."

Felix nodded. He wasn't usually one to swallow his words, but there was something to what Sylvain said that knocked him off balance. He didn't know what it was and he didn't know  _ why,  _ but the words bit at him in a way he couldn't quite fathom. "Keep your thoughts to yourself in the future," he grumbled, throwing Sylvain off and lowering himself into a fighting stance.

Sylvain sighed and mirrored his movements, dropping the topic for now. Felix hoped it would stay that way.

* * *

Dimitri was dead, and Felix hated everything that came with that. He hated that everyone talked about how the man who'd been dead for years was now dead, because none of them could see it before. He hated the solemn not-funeral that was his life, and the way that the war consumed everything.

He hated that he had to take vengeance against killers he knew hadn't actually managed to kill the person they claimed to. He hated that everyone wanted to fight, to throw their lives away, for a cause based on a man who wasn't dead. Was dead.

Fuck, Felix didn't even know, and he hated it.

He also hated the part of him that heard the news and thought  _ good.  _ Another person who knew Glenn was dead. Another person who couldn't help but draw parallels was gone.

Another person who knew who Felix was  _ before  _ could no longer think about him that way. Could no longer reach Felix with those cold, clammy fingers that told him he was the same, or different, or anything. He didn't want to think about it, and he didn't want anyone else to think about it either.

It was a horrible, spiteful feeling that didn't ever give Felix any cheer. Just grim satisfaction as the war's body count increased day by day, steadily robbing the world of so much life (and so many people who knew Felix when he threw tantrums when he was forced to wear a dress).

He didn't know why it was there. He didn't know if he'd always hated people remembering the past so much, or if this was a new, fresh feeling that came from a desperation to find something good amidst the blood.

What he did know was that there was a pain he didn't want to examine too fully, a comparison he couldn't dare make about himself. When it came to Glenn, there was always the threat of the future he desperately didn't want to make his own.

Two moons after the announcement of Dimitri's death, Felix stood at his bathroom’s basin on a rare visit back to the Fraldarius keep. He took the dagger he usually kept sharp under his pillow, just in case of midnight assailants, and ran its edge along the base of his ponytail.

The strands that fell silently to the ground gave him a grim sense of satisfaction. He cut again and again, until the hair that remained was short and choppy, hideous and almost unsalvageable. Good.

Felix looked up in the mirror and froze. Ah.

The person staring back at him looked more like Glenn than himself.

Just before Glenn was knighted, he had his hair cut short. Some referred to it as manhood, some maturity. Others said it was about practicality. Felix remembered Sylvain telling him it was so he could impress the ladies over in Fhirdiad.

What Felix didn't remember was exactly why he followed suit. He was upset to see Glenn's hair go, missed the way it felt when he braided it with fingers not yet callused by the grip of a sword. He cried and cried, until Glenn offered Felix the only thing he could think of to console him: he could do it too.

That consoled him. And Felix didn't know exactly why; it wasn't like he hated long hair  _ now. _

What he hated was seeing his brother stare back at him in the mirror. It made his ears ring with the tolling of bells that marked Glenn's oh-so-noble death.

He pushed away from the basin, quickly telling the first servant he saw that someone would need to sweep up the floor of the bathroom. He moved unopposed all the way out to the training grounds, intending to get an hour or two in before breakfast.

He'd almost forgotten about the hair by that point (that was a lie. He hadn't. He could never forget), but when his father eyed him curiously across the table, a half-formed sentiment on his lips, Felix shook his head.

"Not a word," he snapped, going back to his porridge with increased ferocity. "Not a single word."

"Of course," his father said, a small, insincere smile forming on his face. "I understand." He knew what his father wanted to say, and that knowledge told him he absolutely did  _ not  _ understand.

He didn't say anything, though, and that would have to be enough.

* * *

In the wake of Gronder, Felix was the one to go back to his father's chamber in Garreg Mach. It was his right, Gilbert told him, and Felix spat at the ground and said something rude he couldn't remember.

He stood in the doorway. There was very little inside. The bed was made, the desk already empty; there must have been something on it at one point, and Felix couldn't help but wonder if it had been cleared of war secrets between his father's demise and his own arrival.

Even the chest full of his belongings, standing at the foot of his bed, was all packed up. Sometimes, Felix forgot about the long stretches of his early childhood that his father spent as a soldier in Sreng; faced with this, he couldn't.

Against his best interests, he opened the chest. What else could he do, faced with so much nothingness? This was the only thing left.

Right at the top was a letter. It was penned on rich parchment with even richer blue ink, and the folded edge read "Felix". Felix knew what it was without even opening it.

He wanted to throw it on the fire. He didn't; perhaps he couldn't.

'Dear Felix,' it began. 'This letter was written to be read only in the event of my death. So, if you are reading these words, I sincerely apologise. I have left you in this world to fend for yourself far sooner than I would have liked to, and far sooner than you deserved.

‘I suppose this is unsurprising - I have, after all, often been a failure of a father. It makes sense that I would fail you on this count, as I have with so many other things.

‘I doubt you wish to read of me lamenting my failures. You would shout at me if you heard the words fall from my lips, after all, telling me how useless it is to talk about regrets and things that never came to pass. You'd want me to talk about where to go next, or what to learn from everything. But an old dog never learns new tricks, and I won't be able to learn anything more from my life once it's over.'

Felix nearly crumpled the letter into a ball then and there, but his eyes remained fixed on the page. He could practically hear his father's voice through the words, see the small frown that creased his forehead. It was an expression he'd been privy to many times.

'Caring for you and your brother was one of the greatest privileges of my life. For better or worse (likely worse), I was left alone to care for the pair of you. I will not lie and say I treasured every moment, but I did my best. On many occasions, my best was not good enough for you. I could not read your mind, could not say the things you needed to hear. I think you suffered because of that, and for that I apologise.

'If I could presume to ask you to learn anything from my life, please make it this: the past is the past. You cannot change it, just as I cannot. There are many things in the past that I regret. You are young, and I hope you will live for many more years - you shouldn't carry all that weight on your shoulders. I hope you can repair your relationship with your past and live a happy future.

Ever your father,   
Rodrigue.'

As the letter drew to a close, many sections were scrawled over, completely illegible through a blur of dark ink. There were sections blotted out all the way through, but the worst was at the end. Felix could guess what his father had struggled with, but it didn't give him even the slightest hint of satisfaction.

Felix put the letter down on the desk. His fingers were numb, and his eyes stared ahead. He didn't want to smudge the ink with tears - he didn't know if he  _ could, _ but he felt that if he stared at it for too much longer then he just might.

With the parchment out of the way, the rest of the items in the chest were revealed. A spare cloak on top, tucked over everything else to protect it from damp and cold. Underneath, there lay an iron spur, the perfect match to the one Felix still kept in his room. The cold metal stared up at him.

Next to it was a bundle of paper, some yellowed with age. One on the top was from Lambert, well worn and clearly read over and over. There were a handful from himself, one or two from Glenn - all spattered with long-dry mud. There were a few penned in a hand Felix recognised, but never knew; his mother's.

Felix dropped them, not wanting to see what they could say. Dead words from a dead woman to a dead man; what was even the point?

He left them in the chest and moved to the last few objects. A book of pressed flowers from his mother, given to his father so many years ago. A tiny oil painting of the cathedral, with an even tinier scratch in the bottom left corner that informed him it was painted by the current Margrave Gautier while they were both at the Academy.

A slightly clumsily crafted pegasus wing threaded with beads. Perhaps it was from Ingrid, but the sender hadn't identified themselves. His father could no longer tell him who they were.

Right at the bottom, there was another letter. It was creased in several places, and for a moment Felix didn't recognise it.

And then he saw the ink load at the top; in that moment, he knew. It was the letter that he, now a decade older, had once scratched at over and over again, making sure that the parchment beneath would never forget his new name.

Felix had no idea why it was still there. It was a useless thing, after all, useless from the moment he read it and even more so once he wrote on top. And yet, here it was, so many years later.

It made him feel wrong. Felix closed the chest and tried to put everything held within it out of his mind.

He still had a war to win.

* * *

In truth, Felix had probably been away from Fraldarius territory for slightly too long. As he road his horse down the final road back to Fraldarius from Fhirdiad, he realised just how much the trees had changed since he last visited - his extended absences had grown longer and longer, lately, until it was more like he took brief leave from his advisory position than his duties in the Duchy.

Not that he minded, of course. Even at the thought of it, Felix's hands moved to the collar of his cloak, pulling its warmth (but most importantly its cover) up to better cover his neck. It shielded what was hidden beneath from the prying eyes of ever-curious servants, and that was what mattered.

His chest feeling light from the warmth he'd experienced just before he left the capital, Felix dismissed the idea of going to his usual, rather makeshift office in Fraldarius. "Set a fire in the grate in my fa- in the Ducal office," he announced when he arrived. One of the staff members greeted the sentiment with a wide smile.

It was probably a sign of something good that Felix no longer felt like an interloper in that room. He bustled around for a short while, making sure there was everything he needed to get back to work. His fingers moved through slightly old but still usable paper, half-melted candles, and then to the final drawer.

Felix's fingers froze when his hands brushed something soft. A downy light blue blanket, recognisable as only one thing from the embroidery at one corner.

A Fraldarius Crest, accompanied by initials once recognised as Felix's own. The blanket he was swaddled in when he was born.

He ran his fingers over the embroidery, the tiny stitches rubbing against his fingertips. Who embroidered this? It was likely that only the Goddess knew; there was probably no longer anyone alive who remembered.

His father kept this. He kept it in his office, always at his side when he was alone. He  _ didn't  _ keep it in the chest he knew Felix would find immediately after his death, and dared not bring it so close to a battlefield.

Felix didn't know how to feel, but it reminded him of something; the letter that  _ did  _ reside in the chest, all scratched over, hiding that old name from view. He remembered the expression on his father's face as he watched him do it, the hesitation in his voice when Felix asked that terrible, loaded question:  _ Do you think that's still me? _

Felix's father was also the healer at his birth. He didn't know why, but with the swaddling blanket in his arms, standing alone in the half light of the office, Felix couldn't help but laugh.

Had his father known, when he brought that child into the light, when he pronounced those fateful words into the world, that announcing "it's a girl" would cause so much pain?

The fabric strained under his fingertips, and Felix hurriedly threw the blanket to the ground. 

He needed to get some air, yet didn't dare go out into the hallway where the servants could so easily pass and see him. Instead, he wrapped his fingers around the doorknob marking the corridor leading to his father's quarters. It probably hadn't been opened since before his father died, but now Felix turned it.

He walked along the deserted, dusty hall, until something loomed out of the half-darkness. There was only one window in the hall, directly opposite a portrait. Light shone onto it.

Felix stopped and stared. Of course it was that painting.

_ Glenn Victor Fraldarius,  _ the little inscription read.  _ Painted 1176, commissioned after death. _

Glenn was young when he died - twenty years old, younger than Felix was now. Yet, looking into the painting was more akin to looking into a mirror. They looked almost exactly the same.

That was when he realised.

Felix was nothing more than a sum of the parts of everyone he lost. When his father died, he took up faith magic and the once-hated mantle of Shield of Faerghus. When he thought Dimitri dead, he dedicated himself to chasing his ghost, fighting in his name.

When Glenn died, he became a man. He clutched his sword ever tighter and let go of all the womanly things in his past. He cropped his hair short until it looked like  _ he  _ was the young man in the portrait that stood in the hall, rather than the little girl sitting in his (her?) mother's lap.

He hadn't wondered on the point much at the time. It seemed obvious to him, through the haze of anger and the need to make sure that everyone knew exactly who he was and who he wasn't, that Glenn had nothing to do with this. Glenn’s death had just tipped him off the edge, made him less tolerant of the pain that festered within.

Now, with the distance of time, Felix couldn't be quite so sure. Now he was older, and he knew how he responded to loss.

One day, he would no longer remember the sound of his father's voice. He knew that intrinsically, knew it better than anything (in the same way he could no longer remember which sky looked like Glenn's eyes, or whether his nose came from his mother or uncle). So he clutched everything he  _ could  _ hold onto tight, tighter than anything.

It was a fact of him. A part of who he, Felix Hugo Fraldarius, was: a man torn apart by war and cobbled together by the victims.

So now he wondered. Was he just Glenn? Had he taken Glenn's unfinished story and written the ending with his body, with the slice of his sword?

Or worse: had he taken the sheet of parchment that held Glenn's name at the top and written over it with himself? Did he try to erase Glenn, knowing that the words could not remain alongside him? If he hadn’t, he would have simply looked like a forgery. A copy.

So instead, he took the words "Felix Hugo Fraldarius" and wrote them over "Glenn Victor Fraldarius". He told everyone who would listen that he wasn't Glenn, he was nothing  _ like  _ Glenn, because if he was then the fake that was Felix could never ring true when held up to the light.

Felix stared at the painting. Stared at the man who looked like him. The man he was and wasn't, the one his father never could let go. The one he'd never been able to let go, in the end, no matter how hard he insisted he would.

He didn't know how long he stared at it. He knew that the sky turned from the blue that might have been the colour of Glenn's eyes to the pale orange of evening. Then it turned dark and grey, then darker still, until the shadows of night obscured the contours of the face that was and wasn't his.

And then he clamped down on the feelings, turned on his heel to head back in the direction he came, and reentered the office. He gathered up the important papers, his eyes glazed over. His chest and throat ached when he breathed, just like they would if he'd cried, but he didn't know if he had or not.

He'd lost time that day, the minutes bleeding out to mix with the swirls of paint that stood in that hallway. Felix didn't want to lose any more time.

"My lord?" The attendant out in the hall was familiar, someone Felix had known for years. Someone who recognised him, but by the youth in her face would not recognise Glenn. He should have been comforted by the thought that perhaps someone would look at that portrait of Glenn and think it looked like Felix rather than the other way round, but he wasn't.

"I'm leaving," he said. She startled, a question forming on her lips. "Hand the governing back to someone else. Ailell, make the decisions amongst the staff if you want, and send anything non-urgent on to Fhirdiad."

As he rushed back out to the stables to find a fresh horse, the woman followed him, confusion written all over her face. "Is something the matter, your grace?"

Felix knew the tone of voice - she was asking why he had to leave so soon after he arrived. "You could say that," he answered. He didn't want to spill the contents of his muddled heart out on this poor woman. It wasn't fair.

Besides, there was only one person he wanted to speak to right now. He didn't know if it would help and barely even hoped for it, but he knew one thing: he could not abide the thought of being alone in this moment.

* * *

"Felix?" Dimitri, clearly not expecting him (because how could he? Felix barely left a few days before, both trips taking two days of solid riding), nonetheless met him in the courtyard as Felix abandoned his horse to a stablehand. Someone must have notified Dimitri of his arrival.

Felix took a deep breath and glanced around them. "Let's go inside," he said. One day, perhaps, he'd be able to show the world some of the things that occurred between them, but for now it was better off behind closed doors and far, far away from wagging tongues.

Dimitri nodded, wordlessly leading Felix up familiar hallways until they reached his (their?) quarters. The moment the door was closed, Felix let the carefully collected composure fall away from around his shoulders like a travelling cloak, burying his face in Dimitri's chest.

Dimitri, not missing a beat, pulled him closer, his hands secure around Felix's back and his chin tucked up against the top of Felix's head. They stayed like that for a while, limbs intertwined, until Felix's rapid heartbeat settled a little and he felt able to pull away.

As soon as he did so, Dimitri's expression turned to one of undeniable concern. "Is something the matter?" he asked. "I was not expecting you back so soon."

Felix shook his head, then nodded. He supposed something  _ was _ the matter. There was no point leaving it in the dark. "Do you think I'm like Glenn?"

Dimitri pursed his lips, and Felix's heart sank. "You're family," Dimitri said, but there wasn't the conviction behind his voice that Felix was used to hearing. "Of course you resemble each other somewhat."

"Just tell me the truth," Felix said. It took all his effort not to turn his back, to break any kind of moment they might have and storm away, consigning Dimitri to the pile of people who didn't say the right thing the first time around. "Do I look like Glenn?"

Dimitri paused, then sighed. "Yes," he said. "You do look similar. But I don't think you  _ act _ similarly."

Felix huffed. "Liar," he said. Dimitri jerked away, and Felix hurriedly scrabbled for the rest of the words. "You- you said it once. That I'm more like him every day." He remembered the words as if they were spoken yesterday rather than three years ago, here in this very room rather than in Garreg Mach's training grounds.

Dimitri shook his head. "My apologies for saying it, then," he said. "I... have changed my mind."

"Oh?"

"You are similar to Glenn, but in no way the same. Your tongue is sharper, for better or worse." Dimitri punctuated this with a chuckle. "Glenn was dedicated, as are you, but his dedication was for a cause. Yours has always been driven by your convictions."

Felix felt a little of the tension leave his limbs. He'd barely even realised it was there. "Okay," he said, hoping he didn't sound as defeated to Dimitri as he did to himself. How had he expected to feel?

"Did something bring this on?" Dimitri asked, reaching out to cup a hand under Felix's chin. Felix met his gaze, doing his best not to deflect the contact.

"It'll sound stupid.”

Dimitri shook his head fervently, the little ponytail in his hair swaying from side to side. "Not to me."

Felix scoffed. "And what does that say about you?" he asked.

"Please, Felix, get to the point," Dimitri said, and Felix very nearly let out a laugh at that. Dimitri always seemed to know what was going on in his head these days, and he wondered when he'd become so easy to read.

"I saw a portrait of Glenn," he explained, "in a corridor beyond the Ducal office in my territories. And I... look a lot like him."

"And that had you riding all the way back here?" Dimitri's voice was gentle, as far away from mocking as it could be. Felix wanted to kiss him.

"I think it was the final log on the funeral pyre," he said, letting out a chuckle at the perhaps poor choice of words. "Or so to speak. I felt I'd been copying him, all these years - you're not the only one who's noted the resemblance."

Dimitri nodded, taking a moment before he replied. "I never would have thought you were copying him, even if you  _ were  _ more like him every day," he said. "You've always seemed... genuine to me. Even with everything that's changed over the years, sometimes I look into your eyes and..." He shook his head. "Please, don't think worse of me for saying this."

"I won't," Felix promised. There was something building in his chest, something he wasn't sure he wanted to come out.

Dimitri offered him a small smile. "I look into your eyes, and I find myself thinking about how they still look like the ones I loved as a child. You haven't changed to be someone you're not. You're not- I cannot think of a way to properly express it. My apologies if I sound insensitive."

"You don't," Felix managed. His chest felt tight. "I think I understand what you mean."

He was Felix Hugo Fraldarius. And maybe he wasn't as far from the child with a name he wished he could forget as he'd wanted to be in the past, but in that moment, he was relieved. He was himself, and that was all he needed to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! :) this is (probably) my last fic of 2020 and it sure has been a ride. If you enjoyed this fic, please consider leaving a comment/kudos. I also have a twitter @samariumwriting (and if you like stuff featuring trans characters, please consider checking out @fetranshub, we run trans-centred FE events and we're doing a big bang in 2021!)


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